Bush battles to shore up support for Iraq troops surge plan

President George Bush has invited the Republican congressional leadership to his Camp David retreat this weekend to shore up political support ahead of a potentially epic constitutional clash over his Iraq troop increase.

With the clamour of protest showing no sign dying down and senior members of the Bush administration grilled for a second day in the senate, the White House embarked on a major effort to try to swing back support. Mr Bush left the White House for the Maryland retreat yesterday. Several senior Republicans, along with their spouses, joined him last night.

Ten Republican defectors, unhappy with the troop increase announced this week, are threatening to join the Democrats next week in a symbolic vote against the new policy in what is likely to be the first of a series of collisions between the White House and Congress. Mr Bush will explore with his Republican colleagues ways of how to stop the revolt.

Before leaving the White House, he taped an interview for broadcast tomorrow night defending his new Iraq strategy. As part of the White House push to sell the plan, the vice-president, Dick Cheney, the leading hawk on Iraq, is to be interviewed on television tomorrow.

Mr Bush also spent part of the morning phoning the Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak, and Jordan's King Abdullah to secure their support.

Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state, flew to the Middle East yesterday, but not before a senior Democrat accused her of not understanding the sacrifices of war because she has no children. Barbara Boxer repeatedly asked her: "Who pays the price?" Ms Rice would not, she went on, because she didn't have "an immediate family". Ms Rice defended herself, saying she often visited families and talked to relatives of victims.

On Capitol Hill, Robert Gates, who replaced Donald Rumsfeld as defence secretary in November, and General Peter Pace, the head of the joint chiefs of staff, faced sceptical questions from the senate armed services committee.

Mr Gates said the new operation to try to pacify Baghdad would begin in the first week in February and that, at first, joint US-Iraq army forces would go into mixed Sunni-Shia Muslim areas rather than into the tougher, purely Shia areas, which have been no-go areas for US troops since 2003 and are home to sectarian death squads.

Carl Levin, the Democratic chairman of the committee, expressed doubts about whether the influx of US troops into Baghdad would work, given the strategy depended on the cooperation of the Iraqi government led by Nour al-Maliki, whom he said had failed to meet past promises.

With few other Republicans visible in support of Mr Bush, senator John McCain, one of the frontrunners for the Republican nomination for next year's race for the White House, offered some comfort to the president. He said: "We could walk away from Vietnam. If we walk away from Iraq, we'll be back."

Failure of Mr Bush's new strategy could dent Mr McCain's chances of winning the Republican nomination, given that he has been an advocate of troop increases.

Another presidential hopeful, senator Hillary Clinton, one of the frontrunners for the Democratic nomination, has also been wrong-footed by the rapid change of public and political mood over Iraq.

Mrs Clinton, who voted to authorise the war in 2003, had little to say immediately after Mr Bush's speech but she attempted to regain ground by flying yesterday to Iraq and Afghanistan.

Although she has called for a phased troop withdrawal from Iraq, she is not seen as sufficiently anti-war by many Democratic activists, who could have a decisive say on who secures the presidential nomination.

Echoing concerns expressed on Capitol Hill about the reliability of the Iraqi government, the outgoing US ambassador to Baghdad, Zalmay Khalilzad, said some Iraqi leaders had miscalculated before in thinking US support would go on unconditionally. Now, he said, they realised the patience of the American people was running out.

In an interview with CNN, Mr Khalilzad said Mr Maliki's government was living "on borrowed time". He said Mr Maliki realised diplomacy had not succeeded in dismantling his country's militias and it was time for action.

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